Mom Life According To Elisa

Short naps are so frustrating but they CAN be fixed! Read about it here !

Toddlers get upset very easily. Their frustration tolerance is low because, well, their general capabilities are low. Imagine for a second that it took you five minutes to do one button on your sweater. Now apply that to a billion other things and you have a window into what life is like for a three-year-old. There are  many things a toddler struggles with , but one of their greatest limitations is their language ability. They cannot always properly explain what’s bothering them nor do they have the words to handle conflicts. Lacking both the words and the abstract thinking required to express complex (or even not so complex) feelings causes problems. Toddlers will attempt to handle situations with yelling, crying, pushing, and grabbing. Since all these are generally frowned upon, they usually end up  punished  while the original issue remains unsolved. Poor things. Continue Reading

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While awaiting your firstborn, you may have visions of folding laundry or reading a book as your little one coos to himself a few feet away. Then reality hits and between feeding, changing, and doing strange acrobatics you’d never have expected to get this little guy to sleep, there’s no time for anything else. Our babies need us, and that’s a fact, but there are lots of creative ways to hack mom life. Getting your baby comfortable playing alone is one of your best tools. So how in the world do you do it? Well, my first piece of advice is going to sound a little harsh… Continue Reading

There comes a point in every toddler’s life where his favorite word becomes NO! Often this contrariness catches parents off guard, leaving them bewildered and frustrated. Discipline becomes a struggle and punishments seem futile, usually leading the way to a full-blown  tantrum . It doesn’t have to be like this! Here are a few tips to help you turn your little one’s no into happy compliance. Continue Reading

Looking back on our early years, most of us have probably been sent to timeout, or at least remember what that chair in the corner was for. Timeouts may seem like just another part of childhood, but actually, it’s ineffective. Timeout, or forced isolation as punishment, just doesn’t work. Here’s why: Continue Reading

As a former elementary teacher, I used to cringe when I overheard adults demanding, “Say you’re sorry!” to a child after he’d been involved a scuffle with another kid. I couldn’t stomach the obvious lack of remorse when the child parroted out the phrase, and I worried about the loss of the greater lesson of making things right after committing a wrong. So instead, I used to pose a question, “How can you make it better?” And let the children mull it over before they skipped away to help a friend up, rebuild a fallen structure of blocks, and often apologize of their own will. It was special to watch and I felt certain I’d never direct a child to robotically apologize. Then I had a baby. Who became a toddler. And toddlers are a whole other animal. Toddlers bump, push, scream, and throw things. And they have NO IDEA what I’m talking about when I ask them how they can make it better. So I realized that it’s my responsibility to teach my children that skill. Toddlers are brand ne...